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Power Inverters for newer 16V Outlet Cars

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#22
norazi said:
Pretty much anything except the motors and HVAC run off the 12/16v battery.... When the 12/16v battery gets low, the Tesla switches on the 400v main battery to top off the smaller one. Obviously, the current Tesla models were not designed for continuous aux power draw. The Cybertruck should have a built in inverter connected to the main battery for those purposes similar to the F150 and ioniq5.
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Only when the vehicle is asleep (like overnight). When awake or driving, the DC-DC converter is 100% powering all 12v loads. That's why people that drive more, replace their 12v battery less, because the 12v battery is getting less discharge-charge workouts.
This is only for the classic Model S, because I believe all Teslas since 2015 have an additional mini DC-DC converter to constantly supply the 12v standby power usage from the 400v battery (to avoid cycling the 12v battery).
 
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#30
Posts keep coming up reporting power incompatibilities with Tesla's 15.5v system are increasing. I seriously doubt any other car company will decide to re-engineer their cars around a similar voltage. Also, companies that make auto accessories could care less about making Tesla-oriented accessories.

Meanwhile, portable power solutions exist and are getting better and cheaper by the month. Competition by companies like Jackery, Anker, Bluetti, etc.. is heating up. You could spend $150-200 on an inverter that might be compatible with Tesla, or the same money for a device that you can use camping, in a car, or in your house when the power is out. With 12v, usb, and some with 110v outputs, those might be far more useful and trustworthy than gambling on an inverter that could fail. The only downside might be they would weigh several pounds more.
 
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#31
Bikeman said:
Posts keep coming up reporting power incompatibilities with Tesla's 15.5v system are increasing. I seriously doubt any other car company will decide to re-engineer their cars around a similar voltage. Also, companies that make auto accessories could care less about making Tesla-oriented accessories.

Meanwhile, portable power solutions exist and are getting better and cheaper by the month. Competition by companies like Jackery, Anker, Bluetti, etc.. is heating up. You could spend $150-200 on an inverter that might be compatible with Tesla, or the same money for a device that you can use camping, in a car, or in your house when the power is out. With 12v, usb, and some with 110v outputs, those might be far more useful and trustworthy than gambling on an inverter that could fail. The only downside might be they would weigh several pounds more.
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Honestly, it's not difficult at ALL, for the car to step down the voltage to 12V for the outlets. Tesla just didn't bother. !6V is preferable for many things like starter motors and computer systems (if designed for it). The fact that Tesla couldn't bother stepping down the voltage for the outlets and towing connectors is upsetting.
 
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#32
The vcfront already steps down the voltage to 12V for car’s computers, so yes won’t be too difficult to do the same for aux outlets, probably would be slightly more costly.

Also correction to prior posts: when car is not asleep, all low voltage equipment on the car is lowered by the PCS (DC DC converter). And all cars have only one of these (there is no low lower converter present).
 
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#34
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#35
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#37
I am surprised to read that a 15.5 v input is a problem with inverters. Most "12V" batteries actually charge at about 14.5V, and needed to be equalized at 15 to 15.2V.

Cheap non-sine wave crappy inverters from China often have problems at any voltage, and cannot handle the nameplate watts. Cheap inverters usually run the fan always, even when there is no load.: wastes energy and poor engineering. Better inverters only run the fan when necessary.
 
#38
doghousePVD said:
I am surprised to read that a 15.5 v input is a problem with inverters. Most "12V" batteries actually charge at about 14.5V, and needed to be equalized at 15 to 15.2V.

Cheap non-sine wave crappy inverters from China often have problems at any voltage, and cannot handle the nameplate watts. Cheap inverters usually run the fan always, even when there is no load.: wastes energy and poor engineering. Better inverters only run the fan when necessary.
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Sometime it is not stable because the overload voltage is close to 15.5V. But it is much better than those not working at all. It is very stable if charging your phone at same time due to additional drain lowering input voltage. 15.5V kills most of inverter.
 
#39
Bikeman said:
Posts keep coming up reporting power incompatibilities with Tesla's 15.5v system are increasing. I seriously doubt any other car company will decide to re-engineer their cars around a similar voltage. Also, companies that make auto accessories could care less about making Tesla-oriented accessories.

Meanwhile, portable power solutions exist and are getting better and cheaper by the month. Competition by companies like Jackery, Anker, Bluetti, etc.. is heating up. You could spend $150-200 on an inverter that might be compatible with Tesla, or the same money for a device that you can use camping, in a car, or in your house when the power is out. With 12v, usb, and some with 110v outputs, those might be far more useful and trustworthy than gambling on an inverter that could fail. The only downside might be they would weigh several pounds more.
Click to expand...
True. And you can charge a Jackery etc. from your cars energy using an inverter. That.can be useful in a power outage longer than about 12 hours/
 
#40
Victron Phoenix inverters have an input voltage range of about 9.2 to 17 volts I believe. High quality inverters. I think that is what I will get to use with a Model Y.

I measured 15.5 volts at the cigarette port of my Model Y. As pure speculation, I am guessing that means 4 cells in series (an unknown number in parallel), which suggests the voltage could go even higher (16.4 volts or even 16.8 volts). (The former corresponding to 4.1 volts per cell (90% charge I believe?)...) But on the other hand a lot of people seem to mention that 15.5 volt number so maybe Tesla has a way of keeping the charge state maintained so that the voltage is generally just 15.5 V. Does anyone have any thoughts or ideas about that?
 
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